This invention generally relates to item counters and, more specifically, to card counters, such as credit card counters which automatically count the number of cards standing on edge in a box of cards and methods of using same to take card inventories.
Such card counters are well known in the credit card issuing industry where it is most important to keep strict inventory control of both embossed and blank credit cards to prevent credit card fraud. Examples of such counters and their assorted optical scanning systems and related circuitry are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. of Mohan et al. 3,581,067 reissued as Re 27,869 on Jan, 1, 1974; 3,790,759 issued Feb. 5, 1974; 3,663,803 issued May 16, 1972; 3,813,523 issued May 28, 1974; 3,889,136 issued June 10, 1975 and 4,373,135 issued Feb, 8, 1983. Other counters and optical sensor systems are also shown in U.S Pat. Nos. 4,384,195 of Nosler issued May 17, 1983; 4,677,682 of Miyagawa issued June 30, 1987; 4,4707,843 of McDonald et al. issued Nov, 17, 1987 and 4,481,667 of Price et al. issued Nov. 6, 1984.
There are certain functional inadequacies and problems with the known credit card counters. Specifically, although the Dynetics.RTM. credit card counter sold by applicant's assignee prior to the card counter of this invention has had and continues to enjoy substantial commercial success, it too has certain shortcomings which have not been overcome in competitive card counter designs.
One of the principal inadequacies of known card counters is their inability to automatically provide long term storage of inventory control information in a form suitable for retrieval and manipulation by a conventional computer or in the form of hard printed copy, on site. Instead, users of such card counters have had to manually transcribe the temporarily stored inventory control information obtained from the card counter onto inventory control sheets. The inventory control information then had to be again manually input into a computer at a remote location if computerized processing of the information was required. Such a system can result in transcription errors and lost information. It is also an invitation for fraud, since the only permanent records of the operation of the card counter and the operational results are manually prepared by the operators and can therefore be easily falsified or altered.
There is also a disadvantage associated with preset number selection. The prior card counters are provided with means for preselecting a preset number to which the actual count of a full box of cards is compared. This is done to verify accuracy of the count in a box when the number of cards which should be in the box is already known. The only way to preselect the preset number or to change the preset number was by means of a manual thumb wheel rotary switch for each of the three digits of a typical preset number, such as the number five hundred. Disadvantageously, such thumb wheel switches are not only expensive, they are somewhat awkward to use and prone to mechanical failure.
Accuracy of the count is, of course, the quintessential requirement for a card counter. For this reason it is known to employ redundancy counting by means of first and second sensors which concurrently scan the edges of the cards to feed the inputs of first and second counters, respectively. The final counts at the end of the scan period are then compared. If the final counts are not equal, then an error indication is provided. If they are equal, then the count is verified, and entry of the verified count into an accumulator memory is enabled. Unfortunately, the fact that the final counts are the same does not eliminate the possibility that they have not both miscounted at different times during the same period. Accordingly, counting errors are not entirely eliminated by comparison of only the final counts.
Another problem with known card counters is that no means provided to control an accumulator memory which keeps a card count and box count total of a plurality of boxes of cards of a given group or series of cards to be totalled or subtotalled. In the known card counter, all card counts which were verified were added to the accumulative total in the accumulator memory, without exception, or none were added if the accumulator were off. Accordingly, the card counter cannot be used to concurrently count two different groups of cards. Once an inventory count was begun on a first group of cards, while it could be interrupted to count a box of another group of cards, the other group could not be accumulated.
Other factors can adversely affect count accuracy. Counting accuracy has been adversely affected in known counters by various types of electrical noise. Although certain types of filters have been employed in known card counters to overcome this problem, they have not taken advantage of the new technology of digital filtering and have therefore not been entirely successful.
In addition, there are various functional elements of the counter which can introduce latent errors if malfunctioning and which cannot be eliminated by customary routine preventative maintenance. By the time these defects are discovered, days or weeks of incorrect counting or recounting can occur.
The known counters are substantially electronic and are without moving parts except for the sensors that are driven back and forth along a scan path by an electrical motor. Excess torque overload of the motor can result in unreliable operation of the motor, but known card counter designs do not seem to recognize this problem and have offered no solutions.
In many instances, scores of cards are counted which have already been precounted. Unfortunately, there is no way for known card counters to automatically use the precount information since these labels do not contain the information in a form designed to be machine readable, such as bar code, and no counters are known which can read or use inventory information from such labels. As a result the benefits of that precount information are effectively lost to the card counter.
Other problems exist in maintenance of the display units in known counters, and a means of simply and easily mounting them for repair or replacement is needed.